What makes online gaming so exciting and fun? Is it any more fun and enjoyable than the old fashion local offline games of years past? There are quite a few gamers in this day and age who will attest to the idea that online gaming has gotten to be huge. In the realm of Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and modern Pcs, there are a quite a high number of players that love their gaming, and love playing them online with hundreds, and even thousands of other players across the world.

What makes these types of games so much more exciting than playing a game by yourself in front of the television or computer monitor? Sure, many of these games, whether they are single-player, local multiplayer or online multiplayer love their games. But there is something to be said about being able to play these games online with other people that just scream something different. As a gamer myself, I like to know that even though I am physically in the room by myself playing something like Call of Duty or Battlefield, it’s good to know that I can hop online at anytime and play against living breathing opponents that act and react differently than any AI character from any kind of game. There is that human element.

Gone are the days when we have to be confined to a single room, crowed around a single television set. Many would consider that type of scenario a nerd’s world where nothing but a bunch of girlfriendless guys are smack talking to each other from across the couch. Now there is more of a freedom that can be had when playing with your friend from across town or from another part of the country or the opposite end of the world.

One case in point is the game FireFall from the game company Red 5 Studios. As a new game that is currently in Beta testing, FireFall is a game that features both a large, open world cooperative campaign that can be shared with hundreds of other players. The game also features a competitive multiplayer component that incorporates clans, leagues, ladders and tournaments. Because of this type of online multiplayer, also known as an MMO or MMOG, which is short for Massively Multiplayer Online Game. With this sort of game it moves past just playing with 5, 10, or 16 random players like you may see in games like Call of Duty where you may get up to 32 players at a single time.

With an increase in the overall numbers of players that you can play with and interact with in a game like FireFall or other games like World of Warcraft and EVE Online, there are so many more possibilities at your disposal for online multiplayer fun. Being able to interact with a high number of players at the moment I log into a game like the ones I mentioned really give me more to do. It increases my chances of being able to work with more people, meet more people and make new friends. Imagine going into a virtual game town where most of the characters in that town are actual living people, and not just CPUs. You can talk with them, play with them. Those are things you can’t do in games that feature only local multiplayer, or only those online games that have a small player cap for every game session .